


They meet in a pub, ten years after the war

by Elpinice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Ten Years Later, and it rains a lot, attempt on night noir feeling, bartender Charlie, book shop employee Harry, maybe more like melancholy, they smoke a lot, traveling harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-31 11:49:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13974510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elpinice/pseuds/Elpinice
Summary: They stare at each other one moment longer, before the bartender reluctantly smiles and pulls a smoke for himself out of the back of his jeans.“Never thought I´d see you here.”He lights a new matchstick and his face glows for a moment, enlightening faint scars. He exhales and keeps studying Harry.Harry almost smiles. “Where did you thought I would be?"“Dead, I suppose,” the bartender says matter-of-factly.Well.Harry nods after a moment and takes a sip of the beer.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> I have to thank the best and loveliest friend and beta, [Jin13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jin13/pseuds/Jin13), for reading this first. :3 Thank you. You always will be the first reader of any of this :) (PS: I posted the Jercy-Piece without you, so uhum, sorry.)

They meet in a pub, ten years after the war.

It´s a small pub. Dark wooden counter, neat rows of whisky and scotch, clean glasses. It tries to be one of those aged, grubby places, where old men come to silently stare into their glasses and play cards. It works.

It´s on the right side of dim, the right side of smoky, the right side of antique, to lure the old and lonely and fascinate the young. You´re still allowed to smoke in here, at least at night times, as the bartender explained with an estimating expression, though Harry suspects they don´t exactly have a permission. He won´t complain.

It´s only a little crowded. Harry listens to the low-keyed melody a bearded old man plays on his concertina sitting next to a black piano, with a distant look and a sad smile, lulling them into a story of lost love and memories. There are a man and a woman on the other side of the room, black suit and red dress, flirting above their glasses, shaded lust circling in the smoke of their cigarettes. Four friends play cards, the wrinkles in their faces telling the story of their adventures. Another old man reads a book at the counter. Two guys nurse their beers, speaking quietly. The bartender polishes glasses, fills drinks, hums softly to the melody. Harry´s just a loner, an unnoticed guest alone in his corner. He likes it that way.

He gets up after some time and moves to the counter, motioning the bartender for a new beer while sitting down on one of the high stools. He nods, slowly coming towards Harry, and takes his empty bottle.

Harry watches him, his sturdy fingers and his confident movements. He waits for his beer to stand next to him. Then he looks him in the eye and puts a cigarette between his lips. The bartender doesn´t falter in his smooth posture, never drops his gaze while getting matchsticks from underneath the counter. He lights one with one hand, holds it under the fag. Harry smiles faintly and closes his eyes when he inhales the first breath. When he opens them, breathing out, the bartender´s look lingers on him, shady, unreadable.

They stare at each other one moment longer, before the bartender reluctantly smiles and pulls a smoke for himself out of the back of his jeans.

“Never thought I´d see you here.”

He lights a new matchstick and his face glows for a moment, enlightening faint scars. He exhales and keeps studying Harry.

Harry almost smiles. “Where did you thought I would be?”

“Dead, I suppose,” the bartender says matter-of-factly.

Well.

Harry nods after a moment and takes a sip of the beer.

They smoke in silence as the music shimmers through the room, swirling with the haze, singing of secrets.

It´s a weird night, one that tries to summon the golden days of the summer that lays behind them but leaves you shivering in the cold wind. It´ll cool down for real every other day now, when the rain and the clouds will come with black coats, grey scarfs and bitter coffee in gloomy mornings.

Harry likes the autumn, or fall, how they call it here. It will make it easier to breath, to shiver, to sit in the bookstore while drinking earl grey. Even after all these years away, he could never imagine autumn without tea.

He doesn´t further insist on a conversation and neither does Charlie.

He just sits there, drinks and smokes, listening, watching. Charlie gets the reading man another coffee, two new beers for the guys, a whiskey for the red lady. Harry pays a beer for the man with the concertina, who nods at him; Harry raises his bottle in return.

The bartender dries glasses, one after another.

“Where have you been?” he asks sometime, after Harry nearly smoked his pack and the couple has left.

Harry stares in the flame of one of the candles on the counter, doesn´t answer right away.

He sounds tired, when he finally speaks, more than he wants to admit. “Nowhere really. Europe at first, then Asia for some years.”

Charlie looks at him suspiciously, but doesn´t question it.

It´s true, though. Harry has been traveling, everywhere he thought he could go. Spain, Italy, Greece and Hungary, then China, Japan, Indonesia. Vietnam has been like a lost paradise for a long time, almost like Sweden has been. He lost count of the cities he visited. He never stayed long in the same places, mostly a couple of weeks, except for Vietnam. The last years he has grown tired, stays longer now, if he finds a calm place to sleep and read.

He´s been in the States for over two years now, nearly half a year in this city. 

“You?”

Charlie looks surprised by the question, as if he expected Harry not to be interested. He thinks about it, absently rubbing a wine glass in his hands. “Home. Romania. Moved here five years ago.”

Harry doesn’t expand on home. “Why?” he asks instead, shifting the topic away from it and the bitter aching he feels at the thought of windy hills, high castles and dark, green forests.

Charlie doesn´t comment on his diversion. “Wanted to”, he says.

Harry just smiles a little. That´s a good reason, far better than his own disorientated running across the continents.

He never knew what he wanted, nor does he now, just that he doesn´t want to stay anywhere, while at the same time he searches for something, something that feels like a place where he could someday maybe want to stay.

His apartment here is small and dusty, with a big mattress on pallets in one of the two rooms, covered in a cluster of grey pillows, blankets and books. Sometimes he just lies there and listens to the kids on the street and his neighbors living their lives on the other side of the thin walls. He feels alone then, strange and old, in the way where you travelled too long on your own to adapt to other people.

And he´s feeling old right now, and worn out, and who doesn´t say that when they´re twenty-seven, with the memory of school and teens just a minute away and at the same time forever out of reach, but he feels it like a hollow abyss right inside his gut. It tastes like ashes, from time to time, like bones that shattered and then got burned, because there´s no time to dig a grave.

At the worst times, when he can´t even taste his tea anymore, Harry goes running for hours, in fields and woods, never sure if he´s fleeing or chasing something.

And something of this must be showing on his face, because Charlie puts a drink in front of him without asking, a whiskey, old and strong and burning right through his throat as he drinks it in one go. Charlie scrutinizes him, eyes full of something Harry can´t quite place. His gaze drops to Harrys throat when he swallows again, getting murky and hungry, and Harry feels a shiver running down his spine.

Charlie shifts into his space, propping against edge behind the counter with his hands. He brings his face right in front of Harry, looking at him for a moment, assessing, waiting, searching for something.

And maybe he found it, because without closing his eyes he leans in further and kisses Harry, biting down on his lower lip. Harry kisses back without thinking, without feeling anything more than surprise and sudden arousal that clenches up deep in his stomach, as Charlie´s teeth dig into his lip.

It´s a moment of dark, dangerous passion and it tastes like whiskey and cigarettes.

With a flick of his tongue against Harry´s mouth, Charlie pulls back and watches him for a moment, still leaning against the counter.

Then he goes back to his glasses and grabs one to dry it, seemingly calm. Harry licks his lips, lingers on the taste. The man on the other side of the counter watches them warily, sipping his coffee, but says nothing.

“My shift ends in two hours,” Charlie says to him.

Harry returns the look he gives him.

Then he nods carefully and watches the slow smirk on Charlie´s face.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The rain finally arrives and splatters against the windows of Charlie´s apartment, when the sweat is still hot on their skin.

It´s a dull, grey pattern of soft sounds, calming Harry.

They lie in a tangle of messy sheets and limbs, their bodies flushed together, heads in opposite directions. Charlie lays half on his side, cheek on one of Harry´s thighs, one hand playing with Harry´s hair, while Harry´s sprawled out like a cat, his arms linked with Charlie´s legs behind his head and his head resting on Charlie´s hip. The leg Charlie isn´t occupying is spread wide.

It´s quiet, nice, and soft. The light is soothing, the kind of light you wish was there when you lie in your bed to just _lie_ there, to just think about nothing and breath; dim, shadow, charcoal, a brownish grey.

Harry closes his eyes and breathes in the moment. The sadness still hides somewhere in the shadows, but for now they´re both relaxed, both close enough and apart from each other to linger in their afterglow.

Charlie gets a smoke from the bedside table. He lights one, exhaling long, watching Harry through the smoke. He gives it to him without being asked.

They share the cigarette and listen to the rain outside.

“Sometimes-,“ Charlie starts lowly, voice rough, “sometimes I-“.

He breaks off, brows furrowed. The sentence dies before it really started, vanishes into the night.

Harry waits.

He doesn´t ask, only waits until Charlie decides to speak on. Or doesn´t.

Charlie doesn´t.

So, they remain silent. Smoking.

Their spunk dries on their bellies and junk. It itches Harry to get up and shower, but he doesn´t. It´s warm and his limbs are too heavy. He thinks about a second round, maybe his lips around Charlie´s cock and his hands in his hair, pulling hard, gasping. He shivers slightly at the thought.

Charlies gaze is as dark as it has been in the bar when he sees Harry´s dick twitch. Harry stretches deliberately, showing off a little, which gains him a lazy smile and a caressing hand on his chest.

He sighs contently and closes his eyes. Charlie presses a languid, open-mouthed kiss on the underside of his balls, then one more, two, three, licks away some of his own jizz. The hand in Harry´s hair curls into a fist and tugs, _hard_ , forcing Harry to bend his head back. He moans shamelessly, baring his throat, willingly following Charlie´s force.

Charlie groans quietly between his legs, rubbing his crotch absently against Harry´s neck.

Harry turns his head a little to the side, fishing for Charlie´s dick with his tongue. The grip in his hair gets painful when he starts sucking him in earnest. It´s a weird angle, but Harry makes it work, feeling lazy, greedy, and warm. He´s in a daze, lust buzzing just under the surface of his skin.

The rain runs down the windows in art nouveau patterns as Harry shifts so he´s between Charlie´s legs, Charlie leaning against the pillows, half lying, half sitting. He goes down, down, down, and then up, up, slowly, dizzy with the smoke and Charlie´s scent.

Charlie whispers praises, his hand never leaving Harry´s hair.

It builds unhasting. Harry sucks and licks and kisses for an eternity, loses interest in time and place, just this, like this, every concern vanishes for this moment. He sighs against the wet skin, feels Charlie shiver, and sucks a hickey into the flesh of his thigh.

He laps on his cock until they´re both achingly hard, Charlie a shuddering mess above him. His hand is so _tight_ in his curls, he wants to crawl out of his skin and bite him. Harry ruts leisurely against the sheets, his hands occupied by strong legs and the base of another cock.

Charlie´s getting more desperate with each hum of Harry, his hips canting up and up and up, unable to hold back. He strangles out Harry´s name, before he pulls him off his cock, forcing Harry´s head back again. Harry smiles lewdly at him, fully aware of the picture he must be giving off - his lips swollen and shining with spit and pre-come, flushed to the chest, hair mussed, pupils wide.

“I wanna fuck you,” Charlie breathes.

Harry grinds harder against the mattress, his nails digging deep into Charlie´s skin.

“No.”

Charlie´s brows furrow slightly and Harry grins, cocky and teasingly, “Maybe in the morning, though.”

Charlie doesn´t get to say anything, just gasps _holy fuck_ , as Harry swallows him down in one go, slurping up again. He blows Charlie right to the edge, until he´s singing a chorus of _yeahs_ and _fucks_ and _so good_ , but pulls off before he comes.

Then he does it again.

And again.

Until Charlie curses his name and begs with trembling legs and thrusts his hips up, eagerly fucking into Harry´s mouth.

It´s a night full of sin and rain, smoke and skin.


	2. Two

 

The next day, Harry is gone.

Charlie awakes slowly, blinking into the blurry light of late morning. The bed beside him is empty and cold.

He sits up and yawns widely. With heavy arms, he grabs his cigarettes from the ground and opens the window.

In a cup on the windowsill is a lonely fag end. He imagines Harry standing there beside the bed, leaning outside the window, maybe still naked, absent and inscrutable, maybe watching Charlie sleep.

He had been surprising last night, all grace and sure and silent.  

How his hands had grabbed the sheet in search for hold when Charlie had sucked him. He had been quiet, but so, _so_ delicately responsive under his hands. The curve of his ass had been perfect in Charlie´s palms and his writhing had stolen Charlie´s breath away.

He smiles faintly.

Then he stubs out the smoke next to the other and gets up.

* * *

 

He doesn´t expect anything, so he is and isn´t surprised when Harry walks into the bar two evenings later. It´s fuller and louder this time. Charlie and Mort draw beer after beer, fill rounds of shots, silently working with and around each other, years of routine between them.

There hadn´t been a note or a sign from Harry save the cigarette in the cup. Charlie is too old to read too much into a night of sex - even if it had been a night of amazing sex with a ghost of the past – and so he only thought slightly blue about soft skin and wet lips, but didn´t wait for anything. (And didn´t move the cup from the windowsill.)

Harry comes to the counter and orders a cider, his eyes following Charlie, but he says nothing more than two words. He only gives a faint smile and goes to sit in a far corner, pulling a small book out of his jacket. He´s wearing the same dark blue sweater as last time.

Charlie keeps doing his job, aware of Mort and the small knowing smile on the face of the wrinkled bastard.

After two or three hours, it gets quieter and they take a break, leaning against the register.

Mort drinks half of his beer before he says something in his husky voice, earned from a life that´s majority was spent with a smoke between his lips. “You should go talk to him,” he nods in Harry´s direction. “He seems lonely.”

Charlie snorts. “You go talk to him then. You´re far better at consoling the lost.”

The old man squints at him, doubt written over his features. “I´m not the one he´s here for, brat. Or should I snog him and take him home, too?” he scoffs.

“Rima will be delighted.”

(Mort´s wife is the driest, most hard-nosed person Charlie has ever met, reminding him a lot of Professor McGonagall. The first time they´d met, she told him how she captured a ship, full of grown fishermen, and went after her wastrel father, seventeen years old and her crying baby sister on her hips, back when the last century was still shaking in the aftershocks of two world wars. That´s how she met Mort, a nine years older fisherman on said ship, who had fled from his home, because his skin was too dark and his mother too Jewish.)

Mort chuckles quietly and lights their cigarettes. The crowfeet on his face seem to deepen in the light and shadows.

Charlie eyes Harry. He is still reading in the corner, a third cider nearly empty in front of him. He seems tired.

“He doesn´t seem like talking,” Charlie states shrugging.

“Well, then just bite him like last time. He didn´t seem to mind.”

He rolls his eyes. “You don´t know him, Mort.” Not that Charlie knows him either.

“Oh, yeah?” Mort huffs, half annoyed, half-amused, and empties his bottle. “I don´t need to know him to recognize a lonely boy who´s seeking for company. I´ve seen enough of them. Plus,” he sneers down on Charlie, “d´you think, the long-lost hero of the whole British Wizarding World would be long-lost, if he keeps visiting the work place of his old folks?”

The bloody bastard looks smug as Charlie coughs on his cigarette. “Thought I wouldn´t recognize him, hm? I may be an old Irish man with a bar in the States, but I´m not stupid,” he bites, looking rather pleased with himself. “Now get lost.” He puts out his cigarette, turns around without another word and takes the order of two women.

Charlie slowly exhales.

* * *

 

Harry looks up from his book when Charlie puts two beers on the table and sits down opposite of him.

They watch each other. Charlie asks himself, not for the first time in the last three days, what has happened to his hands.

They´re calloused and their backs are scarred all over, scar next to scar over more scars, like a map of hurt, faintly painted with white acrylic paint. They remind Charlie of the one nasty torus on his own upper back. He wants to ask him, wants to point at his fingers and say, _what happened that you punished yourself like this and refused proper treatment_ – but he doesn´t.

Because Harry talked near to nothing two nights ago and looks as worn out as back then. Because he´s oddly calm, like he´s seen so much and is tired of that, and Charlie bets his tips of the whole month he wouldn´t be the first person to ask him and get no answer.

But mostly because Harry reminds him of the wild cat he used to feed as a kid, a huge old stray, with ugly scars over the left side of its face and only one ear.

It never let Charlie near it, no matter how often he fed it or waited patiently twenty feet away. One too loud word from his brothers or one step too near, and it disappeared silently into the fields and meadows behind the Burrow. It liked to sleep up in a cherry tree, out of reach and far away from prying eyes, only coming down when it wanted something.

But sometimes, Charlie would find dead mice and small birds outside his window.

And one time, in his last summer at home, he fell asleep on the grass, hiding behind his father´s old shed – exhausted from chasing the twins and Ron´s never ending chatter, fleeing his mother´s nagging about his decision to go to Romania after his diploma – and when he woke up, there was dark cat hair all over the left side of his jeans and a tail disappearing between the bushes.

He has a feeling that Harry, too, would leave the second Charlie gets too near.

So, instead, he blows the smoke between them and nods towards the book.

“What´s it `bout?”

Harry gives him a level look, his head tilted. Glancing at the book, he says, “A mysterious hotel in New York City, where people tend to vanish.”

“Ah, crime. Who´s the culprit?

“Angels.”

Charlie raises his eyebrows. “Is it good?”

Harry nods and grabs one of the bottles. Charlie is caught by the way his throat moves as he swallows, a hot wave of lust flushing through his body – wet lips wrapped around his cock, swallowing something entirely different - and when he sees Harry´s smirk, he suspects that that was exactly the intention.

Charlie was right, Harry´s not in the mood for talking. They sit silently across from each other, drinking and smoking, stealing glances at the other. Charlie hears Mort laughing hoarsely at some joke he´s telling two young women who could be his granddaughters. The crowd´s good tonight.

“How long have you been working here?”, Harry asks.

Maybe talking after all. Huh.

Charlie shrugs. “Four years. Actually, I own some parts of it. Mort made me partner couple years ago.” He points his thumb vaguely in Mort´s direction at the bar. Harry follows and smiles flimsily.

Charlie questions tentatively, “You´re working somewhere?”

For a moment, Harry looks like he´s going to withdraw, as if the question already has been too much. Then he shrugs similarly to Charlie before. “Yeah. Small Bookstore.”

Charlie´s not surprised, surprisingly. It somehow fits him now. He can almost see Harry sitting in a dusty old shop, surrounded by shelves, drinking tea and reading. Like a cat dozing in his favorite spot, hidden from the world.

Harry yanks him out of his thoughts.

“When´s your shift over?”

His voice is rough and Charlie feels the hair on his forearms rising. His eyes flicker to Harry´s lips and he wets his own, just to see how Harry tilts his head again and opens his mouth slightly, breathing out.

“How ´bout now.”

“Good.”

Charlie sees Mort grinning smugly when they leave. He flips him off behind his back as he follows Harry through the door.

* * *

 

The night is cold, but Charlie lives near the pub, only two corners away in a little flat with two rooms and a kitchen. They walk in silence, their hands deep in their pockets.

When Charlie gets the keys out in front of his apartment building, Harry shuffles into his space and they just stand like this in the doorway, breathing against each other, their faces only an inch apart. Harry looks dark in the faint streetlights, like an unfathomable siren who lures every person unguarded enough into his trap with just one look and one word from his sinful lips, and Charlie is going to be one of the many poor souls that have fallen for him.

Harry´s eyelids drop and he closes the last gap. It´s an almost natural motion, without any hesitation or prolonging, as if there isn´t a past connecting them, no silences and unspoken questions. As if they´re just two men stumbling upon each other on the first nights of a cold autumn, who decide to linger in the same space a little longer.

The kiss is light, a promise for more, but a smouldering heat´s boiling underneath it.

Charlie takes his head in both hands, keys falling to the ground, and deepens the kiss, relishing in the low moan escaping Harry.

It´s so much, so much desperation and loneliness, lust and want. He has the presentiment of never feeling this ever again, if he´s not very cautious.

Harry grabs him by the hips and presses them closer together, his tongue searching for Charlie´s in a way Charlie can´t help but admire.

Caution never came easy to Charlie, only with animals and others, but he never got the hang of it for his own life, for himself. He always jumps straight into opportunities, not even thinking through remotely how he will end up or if he will be getting hurt. It´s his greatest weakness and strength, his boss in the infirmary once told him, after he had fallen for and into the bed of an intern from Alaska, who´d crushed his heart in pieces when they left without so much as a note. (This, and his ability to soothe any living animal on this planet with only his hands.) She warned him, that one day he would fall so deep, not being cautious and not caring for the consequences, he may not stand up again.

And so, fourteen years later, he falls without care as he kisses this beautiful boy, who turned up in his life out of the blue.

Because Harry is lonely. Because Charlie spent hours and hours sitting twenty feet away from a lonely cat when he was only sixteen. Because he wouldn´t even hesitate for a second to do it again, if it means to give the lonely cat a place to stay and sleep and eat, regardless of whether he gets something in return or just his heart broken. Because Harry is breathtaking and the only thing Charlie is able to see in this moment.

He´ll give him everything Harry allows him to give.

“Inside,” Harry breathes into his skin, “now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you squint a little you see a bow to another fantasy novel, because I borrowed two names from it.

**Author's Note:**

> I´m on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/elpinicerhymeswithmagnifique). :)


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